Conversation · Steban, the Student Communist

Give 'em sex and drugs! They're clearly not getting any on their own.

"You ever heard of a thing called 'sudden onset acute amnesia'?"

"Oh, we're getting into the psychiatric pathologies of life under capital. Let's see where this goes..."

"Yes, I'm rather curious myself."

You've got them. They're starting to loosen up. You're relaxed and in control. You deftly weave every piece of the story together...

... even the lieutenant seems engrossed, despite your revealing details of an RCM investigation...

"... I'm just trying to imagine what it would have been like had he died in the summer..."

"Right, of course. I'm really talking about my top-notch forensics skills."

"The work he did on the autopsy was quite good, I can confirm."

"So have you figured out his real identity?"

Another quarter of an hour disappears. The conversation bounces back and forth. Whatever their pretensions, it's clear these two have been craving something real.

Now, you can sense things starting to slow down. Time to wrap this tale up...

"... and we still don't know what happened to the rest of his armour..."

"It will turn up, I'm sure. In a way, it wants to be found..."

"Perhaps. But that thread of the story is still unresolved..."

"I suppose we'll have to leave it there. But listen, gendarme: We could use someone with your breadth of expertise. With just a little more theoretical background, I think you'll be able to make some real contributions."

"... so anyway, my current theory is that she's somewhere along the coast."

"Makes sense. It doesn't seem like there's anywhere else she could have gone."

"... but I've done some reflecting and these days I consider myself a feminist."

"That's a fascinating trajectory, for sure. It's good to hear that you can still grow ideologically even at an... um... advanced age."

They really have no idea how old you are, much less what it means to age.

"Yes, a fascinating case study..."

"... so anyway, I think there's still a shot. But in the meantime I'm just focussing on my casework."

"Makes sense. Based on my experience, you've got to let her see that you've grown, ideologically speaking..."

His "experience" with these matters is painfully limited, not that he realises it.

"Steban's right. If it's going to happen, it will happen."

"... and anyway, even if you could somehow unpeel time, it wouldn't be the you you who gets rich from those investments..."

"But that would imply that whenever you unpeel time you leave behind some kind of doppelgänger in now-time..."

"Good god, have we really been talking about 'unpeeling time' for a quarter hour?"

"No, I mean literally."

"Ah, so there is a supra-natural angle to this case..."

"Not pretty. Eventually the force of gravity would have caused the rest of the body to separate from the head. There would have been very little for us to work with..."

"It would have been a mess, let me tell you. No way I would've been able to find the true cause of death..."

"Wait, are you saying the hanged man wasn't really hanged?"

... even the lieutenant seems engrossed, despite your revealing details of an RCM investigation...

"... but I still don't see what the lady driver had to do with the strike stand-off..."

"In all fairness, the whole situation is rather complicated."

"I'm not even sure there is a connection, but I needed to get the Pines' cooperation somehow."

"Ah, right. You were playing the long game."

"That's just it, though. She was just one more pawn, just like how the Wild Pines rep tried to play me."

"Clearly there's a lot of ins-and-outs. It almost reminds me of a Dick Mullen novel."

"Yeah, I'm still trying to piece the whole thing together, but I can't get it to add up yet."

"... so is it typical for men of your background to use that, um, formulation?"

"A great question."

"You know, in a weird way, I think she was into it."

"So you're saying it didn't suck to interrogate her later? I find that unlikely..."

"It's embarrassing, but at that point my political consciousness was still pretty rudimentary."

"Perhaps some vestigial sexual objectification from your pre-revolutionary consciousness." He nods.

"It happens to the best of us."

"No, my brain came up with that all by itself."

"Honestly, I think the main problem was my shirt. If it had been just a little cleaner, I probably could've pulled it off."

"Strange. I thought that women were attracted to a certain amount of revolutionary musk..."

"Maybe it's a question of degree."

"I'm just trying to imagine what it would be like to wake up with no concept of what money is..."

"If you encountered it in a novel, you'd say it sounded like a plot contrivance, or like a fantasy."

"Listen, I wouldn't believe it either, but I swear it's the truth."

"Either that, or an extremely convincing act..."

"No, it's just like Mazov wrote: 'The freeman of the future will be he who awakens in perfect ignorance of Capital'."

"Wait, Steban, are you saying the gendarme is some kind of future communist?"

"But isn't the point that money is itself just a collective fantasy?"